


To Be Vanguard

by MrWorld



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Destiny, Meta, Speaker, Traveler - Freeform, Vanguard - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 18:44:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2783810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrWorld/pseuds/MrWorld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of the Guardians have serious questions about how the Traveler and the Tower work.  Things get meta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Vanguard

The day was quiet, so far. Commander Savala quietly typed up another request to patrol the Cosmodrome – the Fallen were acting up again. Outside the chamber, he could hear the hum of ship engines as they passed the tower. His fingers tapped keys with a regular rhythm, like a metronome. He had filed this same request hundreds of times, until it became rote memorization. He sighed as he pressed “Confirm” knowing that he’d be looking at this form again in a few hours.

Cayde-6 noticed hesitation in his friend’s typing, and turned slightly to look the armored warrior in the eye. “Big guy, you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Absolutely, I need a break from this grind. Shoot.”

Cayde’s eyes dimmed slightly, his lense irises contracting and expanding. Savala recognized this as blinking from mechanical Exos. The hunter asked “What makes us the Vanguard? What is it about you and me and her that make us so important?”

Savala tilted his head down in thought. The giant looked at Cayde, then Ikora. She had stopped typing to look at them, clearly interested in the question. Savala chose his words carefully. Finally he spoke, “I would say we are chosen by the Speaker, to represent what the Guardians should aspire to be.”

Cayde nodded. “Okay, that follows. But I wonder why the Speaker or the Traveler, whatever, chose us. We were there early on, we did some big stuff. I killed my share of crazy-big Fallen Archons. But now, there’s new Guardians popping up and doing things that way outshine anything I ever did. These guys ran a mission to successfully take down an Archon Priest. That’s the biggest Fallen I’ve ever seen, and he was an escapee from that creepy Prison of Elders the Awoken run out in the Reef. So that, that surely merits a promotion or something right? We’re supposed to be an army, but none of us have any rank. So can we make them Lieutenant or Deputy-Vanguard or something?”

Savala nodded. He’d heard about this mission, and was impressed with its execution. He vaguely recalled what the Guardians had earned upon their return. “I remember we wanted to reward them for taking such a dangerous mission, so I gave them some of our finest armor, and the Cryptarch translated some of the engrams they’d recovered. But you’re right, I wish we could give them something permanent to mark the achievement. We might ask the Speaker.”

Cayde shrugged. “I don’t know about that. That speaker guy kinda creeps me out. None of us know where he came from, and he’s the only one who communicates with the big ball. I don’t know how it works, and the possibilities are all troubling.”

Ikora nodded chose now to speak her mind. “So much is lost to us from the Golden Age. But the warlocks know of a Grimoire that tells us-“

Cayde-6 raised his hand, waving her off. “Yeah thanks, Ikora. Every time I ask about the Collapse or the Traveler or whatever, you say something about this Grimoire. I’m glad you guys like a book, but when I look at it all I see is a weird cryptic mess. I’m asking you guys about real straight answers. Are we an army? Do we have officers? Is this a war? Are supposed to be conquering, or planning to invade the Moon? Because this feels like I just file forms all day.”

“I have to admit, I have been kept up at night asking myself these same questions,” the Commander said. “Sometimes I wonder about my role here, when it feels like all I do is type some forms about generic missions to go scan this, go shoot that. But we’re serving a higher cause here, reclaiming our civilization.” Cayde-6 put his hands on his hips and shook his head, “Yeah, those mission report things are awful. Honestly, I made a recording of me asking for stuff, and I kept it real generic so now it’s just the recording when they ask about what the mission is. I don’t think any of them have caught on yet, and it saves me a ton of time. Maybe someday I’ll be able to automate more of this stuff so I can go back out in the field and really accomplish something.”

Ikora’s mouth hung open, “No! I thought of doing it, but I was sure someone would notice. Okay, I’m getting in on this.” Her fingers flew through the interface. Savala was visibly mortified. “We have a responsibility, we are in command of a force-“

“Okay yes, Commander, yes you are in command of a tremendous fighting force of men and women whom we must serve. But from what I’ve read, you being a Commander means you answer to a Captain or Admiral somewhere. So where is he? This is what I’m talking about. Are we an army or not? You said we’re saving a civilization. Is it an empire? Are we going to colonize? When do we roll out the siege weapons? Because right now I’ve got a list of a few thousand infantry who need some logistical support. How are we going to conquer the Moon or occupy Venus without some freaking tanks? Or anti-aircraft guns? Because our enemies keep dropping troops on top of our Guardians, and I think we need to discuss how we deploy our fighting men and women. But all I do is type and hand out hoodies.”

Looking at his screens, to Cayde and Ikora, Savala’s light blue brow had been furrowed for some time. “I do miss the action. I wear the armor, but I haven’t felt like a leader in years. One time a new Guardian came in, he didn’t even understand what his Ghost was. I wish I could’ve made the time to explain it to him, to tell him what it meant to be a Titan. I saw he was so eager to help the cause, I wanted him to know he mattered. I wanted to go out in the field with him and show him how to be a bolt of thunder in the field, how to be unbreakable, how to body check a missile. But I knew I had a giant inbox full of reports, about that time travel problem with the Vex, and I spent weeks trying to figure out how it even worked. I still don’t pretend to understand what the problem was. I forgot his name, but that Guardian’s face is still with me. I ignored him so I could read a briefing about some new damn menace that made no sense.”

Ikora had come around the table to sit close with them. She was flipping through screens, showing Grimoire pages about the Vault of Glass. “I remember that conundrum. After all my study, I think this machine god, Atheon, is the end of a time travel experiment. The Vex are trying to send themselves back in time, to alter their own origin so their most sophisticated designs will be present at the dawn of time. It would take massive amounts of processing power to handle the necessary equations, so that’s why they sacrifice themselves to these Confluxes. Then the Vex Templar uses these Oracles artifacts to establish their new timeline, to overwrite the past and navigate around the inherent paradoxes of time travel. If the Guardians can destroy them, then-“

Cayde-6 came around to her screen, and took it from her. “You say the Guardians can destroy them. Don’t you wish it was you out there? You, Ikora Rey, famous Vanguard Warlock, actually doing something? I’m just sick of standing here – I don’t even get a chair. I hand out armor and some hoods, and I tell these newborn warriors to get back out there. All day, that’s my life now. Anybody could do this. I don’t understand why the Speaker keeps us here, instead of letting us help in the fight. We could be with them on these Strikes, showing them techniques, guiding them in the fight, or getting some leeway with the Queen in the Reef.”

“The Queen,” Savala spoke softly. “I have longed to understand. Why am I so different from these other Awoken? Do they not trust me? Is it because I’m a Guardian? Does the Speaker know?”

Cayde-6 was shrugging again. “Yeah, I really don’t trust that guy. Whenever he talks it’s like a vague puzzle describing a riddle. Honestly, I don’t even understand the Traveler. Is it organic, or is it like me? Because either way, I can talk, and the Ghosts can talk, so how come he can’t talk? Did it ever talk directly to us back in the Golden Age?” His own Ghost fluttered nearby, and looked like it was about to answer, until Cayde grabbed it and threw it under the conference table. “And this thing is completely unhelpful. I swear four times out of five, anything it tries to interact with it just sets off every alarm it can find.”

Ikora walked closer to the fellow Vanguard, saying “I can help you with that, let me show you another Void trick.” A swirling pool of void energy swirled around them. Savala noticed his ghost could join them inside void sphere. She looked into both their eyes before speaking. “I wonder these same questions. We know so little. That’s why the Grimoire is so important. I think the Speaker knows far more about the Darkness than it’s letting on. I think the Fallen, the Vex, all these other races have some sort of history with the Traveler. It came to us, but was its purpose just to elevate us, or groom us into something it needed? What does it get in return for developing our civilization?”

Savala had never considered this. The enormous construct had been hanging in the sky his entire existence. He had never questioned if such a thing could have a motive as he understood the word. Ikora was looking directly at him. He said, “It brought us all back with the Ghosts. We owe it our lives…”

They were both looking at him now, and he could dimly make out the shapes of their ghosts on the other side, colliding with the dome around them, trying to get in. “The Ghosts are always with us. Each of us is reborn with this companion, and it watches over us - but it’s also watching us.” Ikora nodded. She whispered, “We can never be certain. We all long for answers. But if the Speaker suspects we suspect…”

Cayde-6’s eyes were wide as they could be. “How do we find these answers? Do we have to keep waiting here for an opportunity to come to us?” Savala grabbed both of their shoulders and nodded his head towards the Ghosts outside. “They’re already noticing our absence. But look for clues, stay vigilant, don’t leave a trail. We can’t risk a conversation like this again.”

The master warlock closed her eyes, and the swirling void around them dispersed, bathing all of their Ghosts in indigo light. She smiled, and said “Hopefully that’ll help them with security systems in the future.” Cayde-6 winked at her, “Hah, well, they could hardly be any worse, right? Thanks for the help Ikora. I owe you one.”

Ikora made the slightest curtsy, and replied, “You owe me two, after I showed you how to Blink.” She walked back to her desk and resumed filing more requests for patrols. A moment later, another new Guardian emerged. He had pale blue skin with white pupils. He reminded Savala of himself, decades ago. The new recruit’s Ghost fluttered about, showing him around the tower on a guided tour. The Commander wondered what was in store for the newest Guardian.


End file.
